Star Trek: Queen Ascendant
by Ownbey-wan Kenobi
Summary: It has never been revealed what happened to Annika Hansen-Seven-of-Nine's mother. Was she assimilated? Everyone assumes so, but what if went deeper than that?
1. Chapter 1

"_Annika!"_ _she screamed as the drones descended upon her, watching her daughter run away from the others that had appeared on the _Raven_. It was the last time she would see her daughter._

_She knew they would catch her, put her in a maturation chamber, that she would be made into a drone. As a mother she was mourned for the life that now would never be, and it was her own fault. She had allowed Magnus to talk her into bringing Annika along, and for that she would never forgive herself._

_The Borg transporter beam took her from the _Raven_ and she found herself in the dark, haunting corridor of a Borg ship. She tried to break the grip the drone had on her arms, but they were too strong for her. It was guiding her down the corridor to an assimilation laboratory. She knew this because she recognized the ship she was on as the ship she and Magnus had been studying for weeks._

"_Erin!" she heard Magnus's voice behind her._

"_I'm here!" she called back._

"_Erin, I'm…I'm sorry," Magnus called. She could hear the pain in his voice, a pain she'd never heard there before, a pain she felt herself._

"_I am too," she answered, and meant it. "I love you."_

"_I love you, too," he called._

_Then the drone pushing her turned her left into another corridor, one leading away from the assimilation lab._

"_Erin!" Mangus called. She heard him struggle against his captor, trying to follow her, but he was forced on toward the lab. She didn't know where she was being taken, and she wondered why she wasn't being assimilated._

"_Erin!" her husband called again, but his voice was growing faint._

"_Magnus!" she called back, trying to keep their connection as long as she could, "MAGNUS!"_

_She thought she heard him call her name one more time, but the sound was drowned out by the noise of the ship and the distance now between them._

_She was pushed onward, through various corridors. She couldn't help but keep track, the scientist part of her fascinated by the part of the ship she'd not seen before. In their time studying the ship they'd only managed to catalog a small percentage of it._

_Finally, they reached the end of a corridor, and a hatch opened. She was shoved inside, and the hatch closed behind her. She instinctivly tried to pry the door open, but it wouldn't budge._

_ She looked around the compartment she was in. There was nothing in it, which was strange, because every part of a Borg ship served a purpose. The Borg did not take prisoners, so why would they have a holding cell. It didn't make sense for them to make one just for her._

_ Untold hours passed as she waited for some indication why they were holding her. After awhile, when no drone returned to assimilate her, she thought maybe they'd decided she was irrelevent, now that they had Magnus. He could provide them with all the information on the human race and Federation that she could, so there was no reason to assimilate both of them. She felt sick at the thought that she would just be left in here, to die of starvation and neglect._

No,_ she thought_, there had to be a reason._ Borg didn't just take people and forget about them. Maybe they were delayed in their plans for her, but there was a reason she wasn't assimilated yet. She just had to wait._

_ She didn't know how long it had been before the ship rocked slightly and she heard what sounded like docking clamps locking into place. The hatch opened at last and two drones entered the room._

_ She could't hold back a scream as she recognized Magnus, covered in Borg implants. His eyes were cold, dead, his expression passive. He'd been assimilated as she'd expected but to see it was horrifying._

_ She had no time to react when the other grabbed her and pulled her out of the room and dragged her through the corridor to another hatch nearby. It opened and she was guided through._

_ It almost looked like the same ship, but it wasn't. There were subtle changes to the design that told her that they had transitted to another ship, or space station. Perhaps she was on a Unimatrix now._

_ The Magnus-drone took the lead and she was forced to follow as he led her through more corridors into a round room, lit with green beams of light. There were other drones here, moving about, attending to various functions. In the center of the room was a platform._

_ She was guided to the platform and then released. Immediately afterwhich a force-field was raised. She was trapped again The Magnus-drone stood nearby._

_ "You are a long way from home," came a soft, sultry, female voice._

_ "Who's there?" she called out._

_ "You've been too curious for your own good," the voice came again, from everywhere._

_ "Where am I? What is this place?" she tried to hide the fear in her voice, but wasn't very successful._

_ "You are where you've wanted to be," the voice returned, "you were looking for me. Here I am."_

_ The Magnus-drone took a step to his left, revealing a smaller form, appearing female. The torso, arms, and legs were covered in the same material as a drone, but the shoulders and head appeared flesh. The look on the drone's face appeared content, like a spider who'd trapped a fly in its web._

_ Not a drone, somethine else. She didn't walk like a drone, nor was she talking like one. A beam of greenish light was cast upone her and it moved when she did, keeping her in it's light._

_ "You're the queen," Erin Hansen said. She couldn't be sure, but there was something about the Borg in front of her that said she was in charge._

_ "And you," the queen said, slowing stepping up to her, "are a member of species five-one-six-eight. Human. Female. Designation: Erin Hansen."_

_ "How did you…" Erin asked, but stopped herself as she realized, looking at the Magnus-drone, how the queen knew her name._

_ "Your husband," the queen confirmed, walking over to him. "He has already added to our perfection." She ran a hand across his assimilated chest. "He has told us much of your species; of your search for me." She turned to face Erin, "How does it feel to succeed in your life's work?"_

_ "Please," Erin said, at the edge of shedding the tears she'd felt since the drones had invaded her ship, "don't assimilate my daughter. You can take me, but let her live her life."_

_ "Annika is no more," the queen said, matter of factly, "she will awaken from her maturation chamber to join in our perfection."_

_ Erin finally collapsed into tears, her knees bucklng and she arms wrapping around her stomach. The queen just stood and watched her, emotionless, for a moment. Then, inexplicably, the force field dropped and the queen stepped forward. She placed a hand on Erin's shoulder._

_ "This is human grief," she said, like a scientist would record the death of a lab animal._

_ Suddenly Erin's tears grew hot and her grief turned to anger. She looked up into the queen's cold eyes._

_ "Why haven't you assimilated me," she asked accusingly, "why are you torturing me like this?"_

_ "I was curious about you," the queen answered. "You would call it irony. The subject becoming the observer."_

_ "You could have learned all you wanted by my assimilation," Erin spat back, getting to her feet again._

_ "Yes," the queen stepped away and the force field was raised again, "but I have something else in mind for you. You wanted to study me, you will get the chance. You will be able to experience what it is like to _be_ me."_

_ "Be…" Erin couldn't understand what the queen was implying, or didn't want to._

_ "This body doesn't last forever," the queen stated, turning back to face her, arms out in presentation fashion. "It will break down eventually. I have other bodies to replace this one, but none of your species."_

_ Erin shook her head in disbelief, her voice faint, "No."_

_ A small, evil grin appeared on the lips of the leader of the Borg Collective. "You will know perfection."_


	2. Chapter 2

_She was both the observer and the observed, like a dream where one watches one's own actions while at the same time playing them out. Except this was no dream, rather memories from millenia past..._

Dr. Torra Joral sat at her microscope, peering into it at the cell sample she had taken. She inserted the tip of a micro-probe into one of the cells and extraced the nucleus. Once removed, she took the probe to another station and inserted the tip into a scanner and activated the display. On the display was shown a partial abstract of the DNA in the nucleus.

"There, you see?" she asked those with her in the lab.

"This is the sample taken from the Rysta we captured?" a man in a uniform asked.

"Yes, but do you see it?"

"I'm not a scientist, Doctor," was the reponse.

Joral sighed and turned to her interns, "You see it though, yes?"

"Yes, Doctor," replied the most promising of them, "the coding has slight variations."

"Good, and what does that tell you?"

"That they are not of our species," the intern replied.

"Very good," Dr. Joral said, then turned back to the man in uniform. "General, you asked me to help the Patrarch find proof of the claims his administration has been making that the Rysta are a lesser race. Here it is."

The Patrarch's chief general had approached Joral at her office less than a month ago. He asked for her help, as the country's leading specialist in genetics (one of her many specialties), to find proof that the Rysta were inferior to the Borg. Rysta was not only a rival nation of the planet, but also—according to Joral's newly discovered information—it's population was of another race. The Rysta and Borg were similar in appearance, but not equal. The Borg had neck ridges and a high cranial peak lending to a tall forehead. The Rysta's neck ridges were less pronounced, but longer, and their cranial peak was lower than Borg. Those were just a few examples.

In return for her assistance, the Patrarch promised her prominence and power as the chief scientist of his administration. She had accepted without hesitation, but not for the reasons that either the general or Patrarch would expect.

"This is what shows that they are a weaker species than the Borg?" The general asked, bringing Joral back from her reverie.

"Yes," she responded, not pointing out that he had just repeated what she said. Pointing to the highlighted genetic coding, she elaborated "these sequences explain why they are generally smaller than us, less adept physically, and with less prominent facial features."

The general seemed satisfied, and said, "I want you to prepare a presentation for the council meeting next week, showing your conclusions to the ministers, the Patrarch will also be in attendance. This will ensure they accept his proposal."

"I serve the Patrarch in all things," Joral said proudly, excited by the chance she'd been given. People like the general only cared about what science could give them, not the intelligence of those people behind it. All scientists craved acknowledgement of their intelligence, they also enjoyed proving their worth. This gave her an opportunity to do both. Then, and more importantly, she would have the position she needed to finally continue her work.

"As do we all, Doctor," the general said before turning and leaving the room with his entourage.

The presentation had gone off without a hitch.

Dr. Joral had broken it down to the simplist verbage she could, catering to the lacking inteligence of the politicians and soldiers in the coucil chambers. None of them had anywhere near the understanding of the work she did than that of her slowest undergraduate student. She did not hold it against them, much—they were the means by which she would get the funding for the work that was her passion. Besides, she believed in the cause of the state.

After she had finished her presentation, the Patrarch had thanked her, then replaced her at the podium.

"This is the time to act, gentlemen," he told the crowd. "We have suffered their interference, their deceptions, even their presence in our land. Now we have proof that they are weakening us from the inside. Every one of them that procreates with one of us, weakens our race as a whole. They threaten us with their very existence! Will we allow that?!"

There were shouts and protests from around the council chambers as those in favor of war stood. It was the same speech, essentially, that the Patrarch had been giving for years. His hatred of the Rysta was well known to everyone who heard him speak, and the words he used and passion he put behind them had turned a great many Borg to his cause. His following had grown so much that he had easily risen through the political ranks until he had been called into the office of Patrarch.

"No!," the Patrarch screamed into the microphone, now able to achieve his ultimate goal. "I ask the members of this council to support my resolution to end this threat...to purge the world of the seditiousness and maliciousness that threaten every one of the proud race of Borg! I ask...no...I _demand_ the members of this council to vote _yes_ on the resolution to declare war against the Rysta!"

The risen members of the council applauded, cheered, howled their approval of the Patrarch's declaration of war. Meanwhile, Joral, while also cheering, was celebrating that her work would surely continue, funded by a war she helped begin.

Dr. Torra Joral celebrated with the other scientists of her field. The news came as a public announcement from the government in which she worked just a few minutes ago: the war was over, they had won. Now her work could continue without interference from her nation's enemies.

And it was important work, even the leader of that nation, the Patrarch, had told her so. Finding those people of her world, Rysta-Borg, who carried the inferior genes that made them weak, and ensuring they did not spread them through procreation amongst her own people. The Rysta nation had been full of them, and they had taken exception to her Borg nation's attempt to sterilize them.

That had sparked a war, a war now over.

"We will begin the great work again," said the Patrarch as we addressed the unified world, "we will purge that which makes us weak, and excel to the goal of one master race that shall live forever!"

There were cheers all around her lab from those who worked with her to acheive that goal.


End file.
